The use of the word ‘Festival’ versus ‘Conference’ or ‘Symposium’ for the Subtle Technologies Festival, which was held in Toronto June 4-6, explained that this was a public celebration. This 13th anniversary of the Subtle Technologies Festival was focused on Sustainability. Artists, scientists, inventors, architects, linguists, writers engaged the future […]
Subtle Technologies Festival this year will be antirely dedicated to the theme of “Sustainability”. While the topics it proposed have always been timely and very relevant, this edition seems to have tackled probably one of the few possible discourses we could think of in these days. Just a few days […]
Did you know that you can retrieve your step motor from your old scanner, do a bit of sodering to link it to a fan (or so it looked to me) and produce a power generator that will charge your cell phone? producing new gadgets out of waste is what […]
The discourse on sustainability is not only focusing on what can be done to turn our world into a livable environment, but it is also discussing the loss of animals, insects and plants which used to grace our lands and now are on their way to inevitable extinction. in particular, […]
I was very relieved to see Jody Boehnert’s presentation on ecology and education: she started by observing that many people outside formal education are literate regarding ecology. this means that formal education about ecology is not sufficient, or it can be, only if it becomes transformative learning, that is, a […]
In general, I was impressed by the variety and the depth of certain presentations. However, I was deeply bothered by a number of statements that had creeped in the presentations. I am not sure if those presenters meant what I heard or they were fretted by the tyranny of time […]
What if…the ultra-traffiked and objectively, ugly road in Widsor that leads to the border between Canada and the US were completely revitalized and greened and it was transformed into a livable, harmonious space? What if…the city of Toronto decided to build a preferred covered path for bikes so people could […]
Since the issue of climate change and global warming have hit the media, cities have had to deal with the energy use of their own buildings. Condominiums with centralized systems are often too energy consuming, as the heat and the cooling system is distributed unevenly and through sometimes poorly done […]
If Emma Master appeared almost resigned and at peace with the possible loss of diversity, bio-performance-comedian(etc…)artist Adam Zaretsky is committed to recuperate some of the lost diversity …in quite creative ways…. using the motto “reuse, rewild and recycle”, Zaretsky suggests that in order to preserve diversity we have to “become […]
When we think about sustainability, we are also immediately asked to reflect on diversity, or the gradual loss of it. with the millions of species of organisms existing on earth (if we include both the macro and the micro worlds) we could be guaranteed an impressive diversity. however, how is […]
in order to record or to examine issues related with sustainability, artists and activists have often resorted to the use of locative media. armed with recorders, camera and often requesting the help and involvement of the community, these practitioners often accomplish more than they had expected. for instance, while the […]
While both McGregor and Varjee implicitly warned against dichotomies to define practices of sustainability (the need to incorporate indigenous and “western” notions, the need to go beyond the dichotomies rich/poor, bad water/good water) and proposed a more holistic thinking, science fiction writer Karl Schroeder decided to take a utopian turn, […]
When we in the Western world think about sustainability, we usually deal with consumption and waste. we tend to focus on ways to reduce such consumption and yet, maintain our own privileges and comfortable lives (which prompt even more consumption …and waste). We end up in a never ending circle […]
when I think about water, a number of images come to mind: water is everywhere and yet we fight for it. water is associated with the image of purity, cleansing, renewal, yet it is not always possible to find it in such pristine form. This suggests that water is not […]
Subtle technologies kicked off with a look at the above issue with a terse talk by Deborah Mc Gregor (see one of her articles ). An associate professor at the university of toronto, and, most importantly, an anishinaabe woman , McGregor explores the way in which traditional knowledge and indigenous […]
